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Jake Shears
Jake Shears (born Jason Sellards, October 3, 1978, Arizona) is the male lead vocalist for the American music group Scissor Sisters. Biography Shears was born in Arizona but grew up north of Seattle, on San Juan Island. While living on San Juan he went to school at Friday Harbor High School. When he was 15 he moved into the dorm at The Northwest School in Seattle and finished high school there. Shears attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. When Shears was 19, he traveled to Lexington, Kentucky to visit a classmate, who introduced him to Scott Hoffman (Babydaddy). Shears and Hoffman hit it off immediately and, a year later, both moved to New York. Shears' early performances include a play of Narnia in 1993, directed by Fred Yockers. In New York, Shears attended Eugene Lang College, where he studied fiction writing and was classmates with Travis Jeppesen, and wrote pieces for the gay magazine HX. For a while, Shears, who is openly gay, was a fixture on the New York gay and electroclash scene. In 2000, Shears also worked as a music reviewer for Paper magazine. Shears married his husband in 2007. He keeps the full identity of his husband from the press, referring to him only as "Chris". Scissor Sisters Shears and Hoffman formed the Scissor Sisters in 2001 as a kind of performance art lark, playing outrageous shows in clubs like Luxx, the heart of the electroclash scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Shears lived. After a couple years struggling in New York (working with record label A Touch of Class, who produced "Comfortably Numb" and "Filthy/Gorgeous"), the Sisters finally found success in the UK and Ireland—ending 2004 with the biggest-selling album of the year in the UK. In concert, Shears is known for provocative dancing, flamboyant outfits, and near-nudity. (During his early years while he was struggling to make it in New York, he would often earn extra money as a Go-Go dancer and male erotic dancer at gay-oriented strip clubs.2) His musical influences include ABBA, Blondie, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Roxy Music, The New York Dolls, Queen, Madonna, Paul McCartney, The Beatles, and Dolly Parton. He, along with his band, has become especially popular in the LGBT community.3 The Scissor Sisters video for Filthy/Gorgeous was directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who he met at a Radical Faerie gathering. Shears attended Sir Elton John's "stag" party before John's civil partnership ceremony with David Furnish in 2005. John and Shears discussed each other in The Observer in 2006. Other credits Shears performs with Erasure's Andy Bell on "Thought It Was You", on Bell's 2005 album Electric Blue. He has also collaborated with Tiga with Hot in Herre, You Gonna Want Me and What You Need from the new Tiga album Ciao!, as well as on Finnish House musician Luomo's "If I Can't". He also wrote the hit single "I Believe In You" for Kylie Minogue with Babydaddy, and "Too Much" for Minogue's album Aphrodite (Kylie Minogue album) with Calvin Harris.